Congratulations, it's a blog!

I hadn’t felt the urge, until now, to keep a blog. I’ve given it some thought over the years, but I think I resisted for the same reason I tend to balk at writing memoir. My personal essays are often very personal, but the idea of crafting my memoir feels very self-involved. (N.B.: I don’t think memoirists, as a group, are self-involved, and I’ve read many memoirs that I’ve enjoyed very much. But I’m prone to find qualities unforgivable in myself that I excuse and embrace quite readily in others; it’s just part of my neurosis. What feels brave and beautiful in the hands of another feels whinging or maudlin in mine.)

Oh, who am I kidding? I can call it “personal essay” rather than “memoir” until the stars fall from the sky. It’s still self-involved. Even though I may only use anecdotes from my life as a way to make the larger point, at the end of the day, I’m still saying “I” a lot.

But back to the blog. Since I’ve graduated from the MFA program, I’ve lost my sense of direction as a writer. While I’m still excited about my thesis as work-in-progress, I haven’t exercised my writing muscles over the summer, and they’ve atrophied in the absence of a regular regimen. There are no deadlines. The job hunt has superceded the creative impulse. This is a way for me to keep my hand in, to continue to think like a writer and hold onto that role even as motherhood threatens to overwhelm it.

So is this a mommy-blog? Yes, inasmuch as the business of being a parent occupies much of my consciousness, even when I’m not actively thinking of the offspring. But I find that definition limiting (and, let’s face it, somewhat pejorative), and I’m counting on you to contribute your voices. I miss graduate school and the conversations I had there. I don’t want to pontificate. I’d like to form a community of ideas and opinions. I want to bounce ideas off of you, and I need you to bounce them back. Think of this as a handball court of the mind.

So take this opportunity to read the previous entries, introduce yourself, link to your blog if you have one, and ask questions—especially if you don’t know me well.

Can someone explain why this is?

Women still make $0.81 to men's $1.00.


I read elsewhere--I think in relation to the GAO's study from 2000--that while women with children make less than women without children, men with children make more than their childless counterparts.


Clearly there is something about trying to combine motherhood and out-of-home work that is detrimental to a woman's earning power, and this makes sense in light of the potential for increased absenteeism and decreased "commitment" to one's job in favor of family responsibilities (although I find the latter arguable). But the fact that fathers' incomes are not similarly affected indicates that women are still bearing the brunt of the child-rearing burden. And I wish someone could explain to me why that is.


On the other hand, Diana Furchtgott-Roth argues in her blog that the gender pay gap is a myth. Predictably, she manages to blame feminists, saying that they view women who prioritize families as "societal problems." Those feminists, trying to destroy the family again.


What say you?

Life Lessons from Klickitat Street, Part One

I took Pink and Purple to see Ramona and Beezus at our local discount theater over the weekend. I didn’t expect to spend most of the movie in tears.

In the interest of full disclosure, I tend to cry at most kids’ movies. I don’t know why. I’m a notorious non-weeper in my personal life. Oh, I feel pain and sorrow, no doubt about it. It’s just that I internalize the negative emotions until they settle in the pit of my stomach like a pile of rusty razor blades, or clench them in my jaws like tetanus. But there’s something about movies that makes it ok for me to release all of that. I don’t know whether that’s particularly true of kids’ movies, or if it’s just that kids’ movies are all I seem to see anymore.

Ramona and Beezus was a little bit different, though. Setting aside the fact that [SPOILER] Ramona finds the cat dead of old age in his basket [/SPOILER], which was rough for all of us, I found that the movie brought up a host of complicated feelings for me.

John Corbett plays the dad. I’ve always had a yen for John Corbett, ever since his Northern Exposure “Chris in the Morning” days. I find him physically attractive, and I associate Chris the character’s philosophical nature with John the actor (regardless of the actor’s personal shortcomings), and that makes the whole package pretty appealing. 

So right away I have a higher-than-normal level of investment in this character. Then he loses his job, and the family feels the stress of his loss of income, so I also relate to his need to keep that stress from the kids as much as possible. I worry that my daughters will, like 9-year-old Ramona, feel compelled to do something to “save the house,” that they will shoulder a burden that is not theirs.

And Ramona’s dad, as played by Corbett, is warm and funny, creative and demonstrative. If I could go to the dad store and pick one out, that would be my preferred model. It wasn’t lost on my kids, either; early in the movie, Purple leaned over and whispered, “I wish I had a dad.”

I’m a grown-up. I know better than to believe the rom-com tropes. I used to dream of finding a "Chris in the Morning" of my own; I used to be a hopeless romantic who suffered because I hadn’t found that perfect cinematic love, and it took me longer than it probably should have to figure out that movies are escapism, that reality is much more complex and less pretty, that while reality does have its moments of breathtaking beauty and bliss, those moments are to be found sandwiched between a whole lot of mundane minutae, daily grind, worry, and heartache. (It's taken me even longer to realize that heartache is the real meat of a life fully lived.) Real families don’t have screenwriters and editors and lush scores. But my daughters are 7. They haven’t figured all that out yet, and they probably won’t for quite a while. And that’s why I cried. I cried because they believed that what they were watching was more than just a Hollywood confection; they believed it was something very real, something they were missing.

Though it hasn’t come up very often, I’ve always been very open to discussion of the Daddy Issue. My daughters know, in an age-appropriate way, the mechanics of their conception by anonymous sperm donor. I’ve gone out of my way to acknowledge their feelings, to not be defensive or over-sensitive, to make sure they feel safe to bring up the subject without fear of upsetting me. I agree that, yes, sometimes it would be nice for me, too, if we had a dad in our family. I probe—gently—to find out what “having a dad” means to them. When they were younger, “having a dad” meant he would pick them up from preschool sometimes, like Z.’s dad did, and hug them. This weekend, discussing it on the drive home, I learned that “having a dad” also means having a fun guy to hang around with. I agreed that Ramona’s dad was pretty cool, and that, yeah, he’d be nice to have around. (Boy, howdy.) I asked if this was something they thought about a lot, the not having a dad, and they both replied that, no, most of the time they didn’t think about it at all. I explained that, if they had a dad, he would probably be at work a lot of the time, and he would get impatient sometimes, or be busy doing grown-up stuff when they wanted his attention, just like I often was. And I think they’re starting to understand that, on some level. But it doesn’t stop them from believing the fantasy exists out there somewhere. 

Stage mother?

There comes a point when an unemployed mother of identical twins thinks to herself, “You know, they’re always looking for identical twins in Hollywood, and these kids are pretty damned cute…” They’re also petite, which means they could probably play younger than they are, and hit “precocious kindergartener” out of the park. This point usually comes when you’ve eaten ramen for dinner for the third night in a row, or skipped dinner altogether, so that your kids can have the entire pan of Trader Joe’s mac and cheese for themselves.

I know what you’re thinking. Don’t judge me.

Yes, as a matter of fact, it does feel like I’m thinking about pimping out my children. Yes, visions of Mary Kate and Ashley dance in my heads. (Or Billy Ray Cyrus or Michael Lohan or Kit Culkin.) And frankly, that feels pretty gross.

But as my savings account dwindles, I worry more and more about how I’m going to pay for their college educations. I try to keep in mind that there are scholarships and student loans, and the days of parents paying for college are probably a thing of the past, at least for most parents. I sternly remind myself that it’s more important, at my age, to save for retirement, because there are no scholarships for that. But I’m old enough—close enough to the generation where parents did pay for school—to feel that an inability to at least contribute something is a massive parenting FAIL.

Strictly speaking, of course, any money that they earned would mean that they, not I, would be paying for college. But at least I could worry less about that and save my stress allowance for everything else.

The wrinkle in this whole plan is that they haven’t shown any interest in a career before the camera. They’re highly creative and love putting on plays at home, and it’s possible that they just haven’t made the connection yet. It may come, and they may beg for the opportunity. But until they do, I can’t bring myself to Google agents.

In the meantime, I’ll keep answering ads for administrative assistant positions. I’ll keep taking those freelance jobs teaching creative writing to kids. I’ll keep working on that manuscript. And ramen isn’t too bad if you throw in some steamed veggies.

Gilmore v. Gaia

I’ve always cherished this fantasy, a dream of creating a certain kind of household for my family. I envision a peaceful, nurturing, fun, supportive environment where my children can, above all, feel safe and cherished, cozy and coccooned against life’s hard knocks. I style myself, in this fantasy, as a borderline crunchy Earth Mother type, while simultaneously serving as the hip, wacky “cool mom” a la Lorelai Gilmore. I want the house at which all the neighborhood kids want to hang out; I want to be the mom that the kids confide in. I want to grow vegetables, and make my own skin care products.

And yet…reality bears little resemblance to fantasy.

Part of this is circumstance. I’m a single mom of twins. I was recently in graduate school, so I was simultaneously underemployed and overworked. We just moved and I’m not unpacked yet (and seeing as I’m currently unemployed, I really have no excuse for not finishing the unpacking, although I’m happy to blame the stress of job hunting). Many of my current conditions will eventually change.

Some things, of course, are not likely to change for the better (or, more precisely, not likely to change in ways that will enable me to make my vision a reality). I’m likely to remain a single mom, given that I’m pretty content as such and don’t have the energy or inclination to date and partner up. When I get a job, I will have less time to spend on the extras: the gardening, the face creams, the decorating. My free time (so called) will be spent on homework, laundry, grocery shopping, bill paying, and maintaining a minimal level of cleanliness.

And then, finally, there are certain aspects of my personality that don’t lend themselves to the fantasy I’ve woven. For one, I spend entirely too much time in my head to be an Earth Mother. What’s more, I’m a writer. More specifically, an essayist: a genre that demands more than the usual amount of navel-gazing, even from an inveterate navel-gazer like me. And I have never hosted a single play date at my house, apart from times I’ve invited a friend over who happens to have a daughter my daughters’ age. Part of this is due to the fact that twins generally don’t need other kids around; they make their own fun. Part of it is that we live in a community where people—while friendly—tend to keep to themselves. But part of this is that I’m an introvert who doesn’t really like inviting people I don’t know well into my home. And that’s not going to change.

While I’m failing miserably in the Earth Mother department, I do have some aspects of the Lorelai model down. I share my musical taste with the girls and they have always been far more likely to request Paramore or Elastica or the Beatles or Bob Marley than Elmo or the Wiggles. We do crank the ‘80s dance tunes or classic ‘60s R & B while house cleaning. While I am more of a disciplinarian and less of a BFF than Lorelai, part of that is due to the fact that my daughters are 7, not 16, and need a little more structure. (And, to be honest, they’re a bit more spirited than Rory. They’re also real kids, not TV characters.)

So what if I’m more Gilmore than Gaia? Can I live with that? Motherhood is a gig in which you’re set up to fail on a daily basis—and I never fail to fail. I yell more than I would like. The house is not orderly. I forget to put the homework or the field trip permission slip in the school folder. I cook far fewer meals from scratch, and the girls eat far fewer vegetables, than I find acceptable. But I have my moments. Like the impromptu personal hygiene lesson I conducted as I drove them to school this morning (sung more or less to the tune “If You’re Happy and You Know It”):

How do you wipe your bottom? Front to back!

How do you wipe your bottom? Front to back!

Well, you wipe it front to back ‘cause the other way is wack,

That's why you wipe your bottom front to back!

Yeah, I guess I can live with that.